Peak Oil? No, Peak James Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler was always the John Gray of Peak Oil prophets, or beyond that, a Cassandra in reverse — often telling direly pessimistic overstatements, but always being believed. I had read columns and essays by him semi-regularly 15 years ago, when many in the West were worried about Peak Oil.

Recently, I saw his "The Long Emergency" at my local library, and grabbed it off the shelf.

What follows is first my Goodreads review, then some extensive additional thoughts.

The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Peak PROFITABLE US oil may still have been in 1970, as anybody who knows anything about the recent fracking boom in the Permian knows that 20 percent of it, at minimum, is unprofitable. Peak GLOBAL PROFITABLE oil may or may not have been in 2005. On that, I doubt it, as fracking has been mainly a US phenomenon until recently, and even where adopted elsewhere, has probably not been adopted at a loss.

But, given global oil production is up more than 15 percent since then, contra fanbois of his claiming otherwise, we've not hit Peak Oil. Period and end of story.

The two swing states of Saudi Arabia and Russia certainly haven’t peaked, even if fields in European Russia (and Azerbaijan), West Siberia, and Ghawar are all deteriorating. And, one must wonder how true the claims of Matthew Simmons et al 15 years ago actually were. (That doesn't mean we should believe every word of Daniel Yergin, either.)

Other aspects appear dated. One is that lithium batteries have become feasible for hybrids (and nickel hydride has been used too, and still is). And, that means that battery storage technology for solar and wind becomes more feasible. That undercuts oh, about one-third of his pessimism about renewables.

That said, the non-peak of world oil means climate change becomes more problematic. And, in a “bootstrapping,” climate change opens more Arctic lands to oil exploration.

Even if the US has certainly already hit a peak in profitably produced oil, and in all likelihood, a peak in oil produced at any price, all of the factors above indicate that oil addiction isn’t going away.

That said, Kunstler was right about several things.

One is that renewable electric energy simply cannot ramp up enough to replace fossil fuel electricity AND decarbonize our transportation.

This all said, a fair amount of what Kunstler worries about in the Long Emergency would be true without peak oil, and without climate change doing exactly what it is doing.

And he was spot-on, sadly, in warning we were “overdue” for an influenza pandemic.

So, with hindsight, and knowing already a decade ago, or five years after the book, that Kunstler had a high level of alarmism even by my standards? Three stars.

View all my reviews

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Going beyond Kunstler’s book? 

First, I’d read a number of essays by Kunstler, a decade or so ago. He seemed alarmist enough then. He seems more alarmist now. And, a Michael Mann or Katherine Hayhoe type would call ME at least mildly alarmist.

He’s both alarmist and hypocritical today if he’s flying in a plane and driving in a car to meet fanbois in person, per a sequel book of this year, as one reviewer notes.

Second, in discussing oil in the Middle East, he had a touch of Zionism in him. Not huge, but not nothing, either.

Third, even though there were indications 15 years ago it might happen, he ignored that climate change would open up oil exploration in the Arctic. Now, especially in the Russian Arctic, how MUCH oil is up there remains unknown, as does the issue of its depth, ease of extraction, etc.

But, if the Arctic of 10 years from now is as relatively calm overall as the North Sea of 20 years ago, and we know the available oil is definitely more than a nothingburger, it will be extracted.

Kunstler (and others) arguably could be faulted for ignoring what fracking would do, as fracking to expand and recomplete oil wells in conventional plays was already happening in 2005. For the first weekly newspaper where I was an editor, as part of a story, I was out on such a frack job back in 1998.

It’s sad that places like The Oil Drum went away. It’s sad in part because by simply disappearing, they gave their critics too much ammo. And, in retreating, they left nobody to defend parallel ideas like Peak Copper.

As for me? Of course, there will be a peak in obtainable oil. Beyond the increasing financial costs, the environmental costs will go up.

(And, I've already run into one 2005 Peak Oil cultist in his Goodreads review. When I pointed out he was wrong, he pointed to some story and chart which showed oil peaking now. Ignoring the issue of whether or not that's a demand driven short-term peak rather than a permanent production peak, I pointed out that 2020 isn't 2005.)

Peak Oilers aren't Seth Rich conspiracy theorists. But, they do need to do better thinking, including better engagement with the facts on the ground.

I wound up blocking said reviewer of Kunstler's book on Goodreads. He claimed that Peak Oil happened in 2005. When I said no it didn't, he then quoted an author of some other book, not from the book, but it seems from an email he sent to him, saying that "conventional oil" appeared to have peaked in 2005, but conventional PLUS non-conventional continued to rise.

The author, in reviewing Kunstler, never said "Peak Conventional Oil," as the screengrab above notes. Kunstler himself discussed Canadian tar sands, Venezuelan dirty oil, etc. Plus, Matt Simmons and all the Peak Oilers talked about oil, period. I said he and the quoted author were guilty of intellectual dishonesty, in my third comment on his review, then blocked him. Greenpeace and others do the same. (Its linked Bloomberg piece is wrong; Ghawar has been producing 3.58 mbbl/day for some time; this isn't something new and "less than expected.") It also doesn't matter if US banks won't finance more Arctic drilling as long as Russia has cashflow (or gets it from China).

It's barely possible that we hit a peak in profitable global oil in 2005, but highly unlikely. International oil experts are agreed on Saudi and Russian oil production overhead, and that it's much lower than US overhead. Even if a water cut in Ghawar is growing, Saudi costs surely still aren't higher than Russian ones, which remain below fracked US ones. As for that field? It has peaked, and the water cut has increased somewhat, but the Saudis are also injecting CO2. It's not quite dead yet.

Big picture? This is yet another issue with a lot of simplistic twosiderism.

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Note to Bloomsberg's Peak Oil liars and scammers: Peak Oil Demand is not the same as Peak Oil, so the header of the piece is a liar. Second, a decade or more from now for Peak Oil Demand is NOT "suddenly upon us."